Beauty Moment: Breakfast in London With Hairstylist James Brown

The U.S. has Shear Genius. Starting March on English Channel E4, the U.K. will have The Great British Hairdresser, England’s answer to competitive, scissor-against-scissor hairstyling madness. At the helm is James Brown, the Irish editorial star favored by London beauties Sienna Miller and Kate Moss. “We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Brown says of Moss when I meet him Sunday morning at the Mayfair for breakfast. “We used to ride the tube in together. She’d go on castings; I’d go learn hair.”

The ten-part series comes on the heels of James’s Salon, the mesmerizing reality show that documented the opening of Brown’s Wigmore Street space last year (and featured cameos by Moss and Miller). Of the 1,000 auditionees he whittled down to four strong finalists for his new program, Brown says, “I remember how hard it was breaking into an industry where the same top ten people are booking every job.” Still, at the beginning Brown recalls good-naturedly, “Some of them could not do a ponytail. My three-year-old niece can do a ponytail!” The show has been filming “seven days a week for months”—in fact, he’s due back on set 40 minutes after we meet—and it’s taken him all the way to Ibiza, where they shot scenes for a “natural hair challenge.” Who will be Britain’s next big thing? Stay tuned.